Handling Session: The Islington Gutter Press Archive

9 Aug 2025 2-4pm

Overview

In collaboration with Islington Local History Centre, Cubitt is hosting a collection of radical print material highlighting local Islington publishing projects from the 1960s to the present. In a borough shaped by a history of community action and rapid gentrification, this display shows  the role of publishing as a form of grassroots infrastructure for collective organising.

At this handling session, original copies of the Islington Gutter Press will be available to view and browse. The Gutter Press presents a record of local leftist community organising and activism, speaking from the ground in Islington and outwards to national and global struggles and solidarities. Taking the items out of the archive and into the Cubitt, you will be able to experience the publication up close – to see the worn tears, scribbled annotations, coffee stains and connections to contemporary local publishing. 

The space will also have facsimiles of material from Islington Bus Company, a collectively run resource and print centre in the shape of a roving school bus, active between 1972 and 1980. Leaflets, flyers and pamphlets documenting Housing Associations, LGBTQ Venues, Feminist Groups etc.

This event is drop in, but please book a ticket! A general introduction will happen at 2 pm, so if you can, join us for that. 

This is part of the Cubitt Summer Reading Room programme: This summer Cubitt transforms into a bookshop, reading room, and living archive. As communities across Islington, London, and beyond face gentrification, displacement, and cultural erasure, we’re turning to publishing as a way to connect across streets and borders. Imagining Cubitt as a space that can resource and nurture the conditions for relationship-building and grassroots-organising. More information: https://www.cubittartists.org.uk/Event/cubitt-summer-reading-room-event
 

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